1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to digital data processing systems with geographically remote mirrored systems and more particularly to such systems in which the mirrored systems are adapted for simultaneous, diverse uses such as on-line transaction application or other priority processing applications and decision support system applications that characterize data base management system operations.
2. Description of Related Art
Computer implemented data base management systems are exemplary of systems that operate with what can become two antithetical considerations, namely: (1) maintaining the integrity of the data on the system and (2) maintaining maximum availability of the data on the system. That is, in prior art systems backup operations to preserve data integrity and normal operations for using the data base were mutually exclusive operations. The considerations of data integrity and availability become antithetical when a backup operation interferes with normal operations or when normal operations, due their priority, prevent a timely backup. These conflicts become more prevalent because as the size of data bases increases the time required to complete a conventional backup operation increases. Yet it remains an ultimate goal to have continuous availability of the data base for normal operations.
The maintenance of data integrity in such systems originally involved making copies of the data on the same or other storage devices such as disk drives or on other media such as magnetic tape to provide an historical backup. Typically, however, these systems required all other operations in the data processing system to terminate while the backup was underway. More recently disk redundancy has evolved as an alternative or complement to historical backups. Generally speaking, in a redundant system two storage devices, such as disk storage devices, store data in a form that enables the data to be recovered if one storage device becomes disabled. In a basic approach, a first disk storage device stores the data and a second disk storage device stores a mirror image of that data. Whenever a transfer is made to the first disk storage device, the data transfers to the second disk storage device essentially simultaneously. Typically separate controllers and paths interconnect the two disk storage devices to the remainder of the computer system.
More recently the concept of redundancy has come to include remote data facilities. A computer system with a remote data facility will include a first data processing system with disk storage at as a local site facility and one or more duplicate data processing systems at one or more physically remote locations that operate as one or more mirrors of the data collection in the first system. The physical separation can be measured in any range between meters and hundreds or even thousands of kilometers. In whatever form, the remote data facility provides data integrity with respect to any system errors produced by power failures, equipment failures and the like.
Storage facilities using redundancy including remote data facilities have become repositories for large data bases that also are dynamic entities. They are subject to rapid change as for example in banking systems by bank teller and automatic teller machine (ATM) entries or by requests for passenger tickets in airline reservation systems. In many data base systems On-Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) applications maintain the data base in a current state while decision support system (DSS) or query applications enable individuals to obtain reports based upon the contents of the data base.
In early systems the OLTP and DSS applications ran on a mutually exclusive basis. That is, no DSS applications could run while OLTP applications were being processed. Conversely no OLTP application processing could occur while the DSS applications were in use. Certain levels of data integrity were provided to assure the validity of entry data in such systems. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,450,577 to Lai et al. discloses a high capacity transaction system in which integrity is assured while transaction processing is underway. In this particular approach, a system receives events from an event generator and stores the raw events to disk, the raw events corresponding, for example, to different data entries for a particular record. Structural information relating events to transactions is not stored on disk. This provides data integrity during the construction of raw events to form a transaction or record to be posted to the data base.
Referring to the issue of availability, the increase in the number of transactions posted to such data bases and the need for twenty-four hour transaction processing particularly introduced by the sheer number of transactions being processed and worldwide access has lead to a ultimate goal of continuous availability for processing OLTP applications. It is no longer acceptable to interrupt the process of OLTP applications for purposes of processing DSS applications. Yet, if this requirement were strictly construed, it would never be possible to obtain queries, so the data base would, in effect, be useless. Consequently steps have been taken to maximize the availability of a system for processing OLTP or other priority applications while still permitting the processing of DSS applications on a timely basis.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,317,731 to Dias et al. discloses one approach for providing separate processes or on-line transaction application and decision support system application processing. In this patent on-line transaction and decision support system application processing are referred to as transaction and query processing respectively. Dias et al. utilize an intelligent page store for providing concurrent and consistent access by a functionally separate transaction entity and a query entity to a shared data base while maintaining a single physical copy of most of the data. The intelligent page store contains shared disk storage. An intelligent versioning mechanism allows simultaneous access by a transaction processor and a query processor. However, the transaction processor is presented current data while the query processor is presented a recent and consistent version of the data. In this particular approach both the transaction and query processors operate independently of each other and are separately optimized. However, the query processor apparently can only read data from the intelligent page store.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,495,601 to Narang et al. discloses an alternative approach for separating on-line transaction and device systems support application processing. In this particular embodiment transactions directly effect data at a series of disks through a controller. When a decision support application is processed, a host produces a series of parameters that pass to the controller and represent the selection criteria for records in a data base. The controller then operates on the data base independently of the host to identify those records satisfying the criteria. While this occurs, the host temporarily stores any updates due to transactions in a buffer pool. The decision support system seems to be limited to read-only operations.
While the foregoing references provide alternates for maximizing the availability of a system for processing OLTP or like priority applications, they do not effect a complete segregation of those processes. These references also fail to provide any suggestions for procedures that will provide data redundancy. Moreover the processing of decision support system or equivalent applications is limited to read only operations. This can limit the range of procedures that decision support system applications can perform.